imperfectcats
Joined 9 years ago
Karma
129
Submissions
31
Member since
Sep 21
Recent submissions
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
Until they ant to retire. Then what do you do?
If you are happy to walk away and hand the "business they work at" for free to someone, flame on. Thing is, unless that is family, who would you give it to and why?
Comment · 3 years ago
Ditto - and the same with the claims of solar and wind companies because of - [Goodhart's Law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
Comment · 3 years ago
I wish regulation worked that way! Regulations change all the time - if not in law certainly in practice/interpretation.
That is what makes industries with heavy regulation such risky investments.
Comment · 3 years ago
Goodhart's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
Any ESG system that uses a calculated number composed of many areas will quickly fall prey to Goodhart's Law. With an E, an S and a G to work on, the areas for change are numerous enough that Goodhart's Law holds even in a non-cynical world.
When an edict that "We need to increase our X score this quarter" is handed down, the real, living people who have to improve the ESG rating are likely limited in what they can do. A combination of pre-existing contracts and commitments, difficulty in changing large systems and problems with multi-department co-ordination means that most changes will be small and isolated, i.e. things where one department or small team can implement the entire change.
Comment · 3 years ago
I wish articles like this had prominent dates!
Comment · 5 years ago
They don't do they?
By my count all the non-front end devs do back end, so Client Applications (2), Core Services/Platform (1) & Dev Ops/Infra (1)
Comment · 5 years ago
OK, so you read that section and see it as "repeatedly said programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended"?
There is another section with programs Damore claimed would be more effective. I am confused why replacing programs equates to ending them. Unless the goal is only to have good intentions, shouldn't the effectiveness of programs matter?
Comment · 5 years ago
Can you point me to the section that says that: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
Being as generous with the interpretation as possible, I guess suggesting new programs to replace existing ones could be interpreted as "programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended", as ending one and replacing it is kind of ending. Saying "repeatedly" seems a stretch though.
Can you explain what I'm missing that lead to your beliefs?
Comment · 5 years ago
Is there a name for that, where whatever the limit is, people set things right at it? The same is true in progressive tax brackets, and the number of cancer cases that people get right when people are eligible for Medicare in the USA.
Seems like it is common enough to have a name.
Comment · 5 years ago
Then that is tomorrow me's problem!
I honestly think a lot of thinking works that way, where we'll let tomorrow me worry about it. To be fair, a lot of the time it makes sense. The problems a solution creates are things we need to accept when alternative is worse (think global warming vs starvation circa 1770).
Comment · 5 years ago
Purely economically motivated decisions are rare. We all have reasons beyond the financial to live wherever, including something as simple as our wife/husband wants to live there.
There is also an inertia bias. Life has to get pretty expensive for many people to want to undergo the hassle of moving cities / states, which includes leaving behind loved ones, and learning everything new (including leisure things like where you like to eat).
Going meta, NYC and California/The Bay Area make the bulk of their tax revenue from very few industries. The tipping point at which they lose a financially significant portion of their tax base, and the flow on affects of that for government workers and the multiplier downstream, has likely been reached.
Comment · 5 years ago
How does that relate to this specific law? Something can be bad, and the cure as bad or worse. Can we all agree on at least that?
Comment · 5 years ago
It was never about pay, it was about all the other conditions. I am sure there is a model that provides some revenue that works for all concerned, but when you demand algorithm updates for a few, it is just plain silly.
This is modern political reporting - a binary focus on one single element that ignores the multitude of other things tacked on.
Comment · 5 years ago
It is not (just) about paying. It is about a condition that demands Google reveal their algorithm. This is a common problem with modern legislation, where the awful, disgusting, dirty politics of the things hidden in legislation gets lost behind the "big ticket" dispute.
Here is the part Google objects to from their propaganda piece https://about.google/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/ under "Why does the revised Code not work for Google?":
> 14 days algorithm notification: It requires us to give news publishers special treatment—14 days’ notice of certain algorithms changes and ‘internal practices’. Even if we could comply, that would delay important updates for our users and give special treatment to news publishers in a way that would disadvantage everyone else.
I would argue it is even worse, as a SUBSET of publishers that the Australian government deems worthy qualify. Basically Rupert Murdoch, for my English speaking cousins in other countries, and their only real local competitor.
If this was ONLY about paying, it would be a negotiation. This is a bizarre law that aims to profit the people who are supposed to hold the government of my country accountable, and give a leg up to specific publishers. None of that bodes well for democracy in my country, and this is government getting in bed with specific businesses, the cynic in me believes to win the government more favourable reporting.
The Goodreads dev said "the site was originally built as a giant pile of Rails spaghetti with views mixed with business logic and such and then a fuck ton of weird features built and left to sit there". I'm not sure why you think that is or ever was "the Rails way", but it seems more like the classic "move fast and break stuff" startup engineering than anything resembling rails to me.